Port Phillip Ecohouse

Sustainable building concepts have been around for many years. The basic principle is that we build so as not to dissipate things. Buildings are made to last, so we don't damage the environment, and we don't waste energy.

Simple enough, one might think. If we can put a man on the moon, travel underwater and climb buildings in an elevator, surely we can build sensibly and sustainably.

Advertisement

But there are major issues to consider if a true sustainable result is to be met - from social and cultural suitability; energy usage and cost; how to generate energy (using solar power, tidal movement, wind, for example); recycling materials and water; waste management and green-house emissions.

Experimental buildings are scattered through out the world, some aggressively seeking a solution to all sustainable issues, others dealing with a few issues only, and the success rate for each is measurable. So we learn each time how to improve our designs.

But, so often, these experimental buildings show all the signs of mud-brickness, a kind of parsimonious earnestness, as if hand-wrought things are better than those made by a machine.

Often, the buildings are constructed of rough timbers, designed to mimic a normal house, but detailed for green credentials, replete with the machinery of sustainability, including solar panels, water tanks and huge, plastic, recycling and garden compost bins.

There is often a clumsiness and rugged character about these places, not much polish in the finish. It is possible to design beautiful, sustainable buildings, but few examples exist.

The City of Port Phillip has a genuine and positive program for encouraging sustainability. It sets guidelines, provides information, measures household waste, encourages rooftop gardens and generously supports the idea. Part of its program is Port Phillip EcoHouse, on a corner of Blessington Gardens in St Kilda, designed by Peter Ho.

The stated intention was to construct an ordinary house and garden as a model sustainable site, focusing on water, energy and waste management, building and garden design, and what the council calls, "personal wellbeing".

The building comprises recycled timbers, rugged brick walls, timber veranda frames. Inside, it is a standard plasterboard container. It is planned simply, with rooms flanking a corridor, and it is used for a variety of purposes as a community resource, meeting hall, offices and study resource.

The roof contains a solar heater and more solar panels and the gardens (by Martin Reeves) produce food and are planted with native vegetation to encourage wildlife.

Warming sun is captured in winter with window sizes and locations preventing heat build-up during summer. Water from the roof and from the sewerage system (black water) is recycled via tanks and sensible management of the resource is encouraged.

It all sounds wonderful: a clean, ambitious soft-technology that provides a glimpse into what could become normal building before we run out of natural resources.

Praise is due for the idea to mimic a normal-looking house so that people will understand the benefits sustainable design offers.

But this exercise becomes a kind of caricature of greenness when we touch the rough timbers, brush past the knotty posts and realise the lack of spatial invention inside.

This is a very ugly house.

The point is, a truly sustainable building would be best represented by good, inventive architecture. Such an approach would allow for greater experimentation with form, materials, glazing, shading and the mechanics of sustainability.

Historicism, a humble ordinariness, imitation and the banal expression of domestic architectural bliss result in a weak and meagre aesthetic for this otherwise exciting idea.

True sustainability would benefit most by good engineering (including environmental issues), good functionality and that "something else". Sustainable architecture should also enchant and nourish the imagination.

Norman Day is a practising architect, adjunct professor of architecture (RMIT) and architecture writer for The Age.